Post-Darwinist

This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

Enter your search termsSubmit search form

Custom Search

Friday, April 16, 2010

Sal, no we cannot all just get along

Here, Sal Cordova wonders why we can't all just get along, after a senior JPL computer system administrator was demoted for loaning co-workers DVDs supporting intelligent design.

Well, Sal, here is why we can't: Darwinists, like Islamists, have the Final Revelation, after which there is no other revelation. No-God will punish all infidels.

Of course, in practice, with Darwinists as with Islamists, that means that the fanatic must punish the infidel himself.

That makes sense. Both God and No-God can be mighty slow in these matters, and the best way to keep up a fanatical faith is quick vengeance now against any and all dissenters.

I wrote to a friend recently on this very topic:

Harvard's Steve Pinker reminds us that "our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth." Darwin thought such things, too, and the thought terrified him in a way that it doesn't terrify Pinker or the average pop science writer - which shows us how much Darwinism is now part of academic and popular ethos.

The obvious response I hear all the time is, well then, Pinker's argument is no truer than anyone else's - indeed, many have made that precise point any number of times.

But that quite reasonable response completely misses the point! To the extent that The Prophet Darwin is the Final Revelation, after this, there is no other revelation. Darwin cannot be confuted. The Final Revelation obviates argument. So argument ends.

Truth, falsehood, and evidence are irrelevant. Demonstrations of contradiction and nonsense are not actually a means of confuting Darwinism. Just listen to the nonsense Darwinists talk, and compare it to the probability statistics for what they claim and the paltry evidence they actually present.

If my interpretation is sound, it would explain the need to put everything, including nonsense like "evolutionary psychology" or "evolutionary medicine" under Darwin's umbrella.

Why? Because anything that falls inside the Final Revelation of Darwinism falls beyond the reach of truth, falsehood, evidence, or - in the case of evolutionary psychology - the judgement that it is patent nonsense. And, in the case of eugenics, consider the obvious contradiction between "survival of the fittest" and the eugenicists' apparent inability to just mind their own business about who has children.

Why JPL's execs should think it any of their business if that guy was loaning non-porn/non-crime DVDs to his co-workers is beyond me - but I am a free speech journalist, and not a Darwinist.

The typical Darwinist has little use for intellectual freedom, because he has the Final Revelation.